Aju Varghese Alex

I am still coming to terms with how awful my experience was with Aju. I had previously had an amazing experiencing experience with one of Lifestance's Psychologists and was recommended to Aju for treatment. At first, I appreciated her directness and even though there was zero human to human connection, I wanted to trust that she had my best interest in mind and that she was just as knowledgable as the other professionals I have encountered at Life Stance. I felt unheard, unseen and in the end of about a year giving her treatment plan a shot, I felt so discouraged and low and quite frankly worse than I was before. She had me trying multiple antidepressants when I told her I did not want to. She was not compassionate nor did she have bedside manner. You would think as a previous nurse she would know how to treat people. Luckily, after having enough of feeling mentally worse and being spoken to like I am a child and don't understand my own brain, I cancelled my last appointment with her,… Ben the office manager made it right promptly. I was placed with Samantha Brown who is phenomenal. I would never recommend Aju Alex to anyone. Horrible and traumatizing experience.

She is condescending and dismissive while also offering no unique or meaningful insights into treatment plan. She mostly does zoom and does not care about individual patients outside of those 15 minutes, she is happy to waste their money on lip service and unnecessary tests before offering less help than even interns I’ve worked with in the past. Avoid.

Do not go here for mental health or benzodiazepines. I just moved back to the area. I suffer from extreme PTSD from childhood abuse. I initially made an appointment with Dr. Carly Bronson, who has prescribed 6-month prescriptions for Alprazolam many times over the previous years. Carly Bronson told me that the clinic does not prescribe Alprazolam even though she has written the prescription many times in previous years. I was told to make a psych appointment with Aju Alex. The appointment with Aju Alex was a week later. During the whole appointment, I felt as if I was being treated as a drug user. The doctor was giving me strange looks and making me feel really uncomfortable. Aju Alex told me I would have to get off the medication after being prescribed it by multiple doctors over the last 18 years, including a doctor from this clinic. I could barely drive home, suffering from multiple panic attacks. It is now almost 2 weeks since the initial visit and I have no prescriptions. Not… even for the Paxil that was supposed to be prescribed by both doctors and was sent to my pharmacy. I will have to suffer possible deadly withdrawal symptoms such as seizures. I will have to do a cold turkey withdrawal from both the Alprazolam and the Paxil at the same time. I will be contacting a malpractice attorney and the local/national media, Medical Board of California. I hope the doctors at the Big Bear clinic will like being subpoenaed to testify in court. This clinic does not care about their patients and has exacerbated my PTSD tenfold.